


Three Things, Four Corners

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Back to Starling, F/M, Vegas Flashbacks, season 4 spec
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4566507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olicity Season 4 spec fic. </p><p>After her husband left, Donna Smoak had raised her daughter to expect very little from the opposite sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Things, Four Corners

_A/N: 4a.m. fic alert. Written in the margins of my plane read, because I hate flying and love Diet Coke._

 

**Three Things, Four Corners**

After her husband left, Donna Smoak had raised her daughter to expect very little from the opposite sex.

“Baby girl, there’s only three things I need from a man,” she had told Felicity one day, out of breath and on her break from an afternoon shift at the MGM Grand. “I need him to bring me Diet Coke with a straw, I need him to hold me on an airplane and I need him to help me put the fitted sheet on the bed.”

Her mother had said it once and then countless times after, as it became a catchphrase of sorts with her friends and co-workers, who absolutely loved it. But Felicity remembers the first time clearly. She is, even all these years later, absolutely certain that she is in first grade in the memory, the year Donna had finally caved and allowed her to tag along at work after school. Felicity getting too old for daycare (and far too mature for her age) had luckily coincided with her mother befriending a young pastry chef at the hotel, a kind-hearted girl who had moved out from Pennsylvania and was working her way through UNLV.

Kelly had offered to give up a back corner of her prep table so Felicity could be out of the way while Donna worked, and she had studied everything from addition and subtraction to AP Calculus while seated on ten pound bags of flour, surrounded by the smell of yeast and cinnamon. Her mother visited on her breaks, bringing down bar food and gossip, most often regaling them both with tales of men who had done her wrong. And it didn’t matter if it was customers or bartenders or lovers, they had all done her wrong.

Donna’s three-pronged proclamation had initially seemed like an assortment of fairly unromantic examples, but as she grew older, Felicity started to realize that each part of the motto was inexplicably integral to her mother’s image of herself.

The Diet Cokes with a straw because Donna swilled the stuff like water and because, duh, lipstick. The airplane thing made sense because she flew sometimes for work, rich clients throwing private parties. While Felicity never rode along, she knew for a fact her mother was petrified during takeoff and landing, and as a bonus, usually very weepy once she had reached cruising altitude. She blamed it on cabin pressure, but Felicity figured it was the sappy romance novels her mother read to distract herself. Donna told her daughter ad nauseum about the men in these books, how attentive they were, how sensitive, how caring. Then Felicity would watch, baffled, as her mother dated men who were the exact opposite of her “fantasy.”

Donna Smoak had been careful enough not to install a revolving door of suitors on the apartment she shared with her daughter, but she was less careful with the heart she wore prominently on her sleeve (which was truthfully, more often than not, a spaghetti strap). Even a child far less perceptive than Felicity would have caught on eventually, but as it was, Donna’s brainy daughter was able to read her mother’s heartaches even before she could read binary code.

The sheets thing, Felicity didn’t figure out until later.

Over the years, the motto evolved into what Donna Smoak dubbed the “fitted sheet” test. The drinks were a given, and not all of her suitors made it to air travel status, but “honey, one look at a man and I can tell whether or not he’d help me make the bed.”

“Jesus, Mom” Felicity would scoff, once she was old enough.

 

* * *

 

They’re not back in Starling for three days before they’re thrust into the blinding spotlight. Thea, Laurel and Digg had been pursuing a heist for a few weeks, and when the goods surface at a charity auction, the team thumbs their way through a few possibilities before someone smacks their head on the most obvious solution.

“We should just go, together,” Oliver had repeated, turning to her with eyes she couldn’t read. “It’s our easiest way in, and the team will be able to monitor everything from the outside.”

He was right, but her throat was as dry as it’s ever been. So, she had just nodded.

That’s how she ended up here, hyperventilating in the walk-in closet of Thea’s guestroom. Which, by the way, also has a full vanity and is bigger than the first apartment she shared with her mother after her dad walked out. Her dress is perfect and her shoes are perfect and her makeup is nearly perfect, as long as she doesn’t start crying.

It’s overwhelming. Not the ruse itself, she’s been a bigger part of a dozen of those by now. The scary part of this one lies in exactly how much of it is real. It’s really a Starling City function and they’re really a couple and when he knocks lightly and opens the door to the bedroom, she can’t even see him but she knows he’s really Oliver Queen and he’s really here for her. Oliver Queen, who was recently accused of being both The Arrow and dead, but is neither of those things, not anymore. He’s just hers. It's overwhelming.

“Felicity?”

“In here.” It’s two syllables and her voice cracks through each one. She hears him set something down in the bedroom, _their_ bedroom, and then he’s rushing in to her. He takes one look at her face and sits down next to her, pulling her legs to drape over his lap, scooting her close and wrapping her upper body in his arms. Later, she’ll try and have a sense of humor about collapsing onto the fainting couch.

“Hey hey hey,” he whispers into her hair, then down her neck, “it’s okay. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

It’s the exact move he pulled last week, when she had her very first panic attack on the plane ride home. It hit her all at once, the Starling and Ray and Diggle and CEO of it all and she had gone wild with panic until he lifted the armrest between their seats and drawn her over until she was half-draped and wrapped up on him like she is now.

“You look so beautiful.” He’s still whispering, murmuring to her as his hands trace soothing patterns down her back. It’s exactly what she needs and Felicity doesn’t know how he’s figured it out so quickly.

She stays quiet, afraid to trust the words that might jump out of her mouth right now.

“I got drinks,” he remembers after a few minutes, gently moving her legs so he can stand, making his way back to the bedroom. She follows. They kind of do that now, she’d realized on the road trip, spend as little time as possible apart. She had called him on it once and Oliver had only been halfway through explaining how it was better to follow along with her than wait for her to come back, when she realized she’d been doing the same thing.

“Thea needs to go shopping,” he calls back to her, and he sounds a little sheepish. “She only had water and Diet Coke.”

He’s turning to her as she enters the room, holding two almost-matching glasses with matching straws.

She just laughs.

“How did you...?”

“She said if you were getting ready, I should bring you a straw,” Oliver admits adorably, motioning one of the glasses at his lips which are already twenty-seven kinds of distracting. “I guess it makes sense.”

She takes the water from him gratefully, and he sets the other glass down on the bedside table. Which draws her attention to the bed. Which is made. That’s different for them, and it’s not the only thing.

“Oh yeah, the sheets you ordered came in,” he says nonchalantly, like he hadn’t forced her to overnight a new set when he agreed to move in (temporarily) with his little sister. “I washed them and put them on. Do you like the way they look?”

Screw it.

Felicity kisses him hard, even through his muffled protests about her lipstick. She grabs the lapels of that gray sport coat and smears pink across his mouth.

“Eh, so we’ll be five minutes late.” She shrugs with a smile when she pulls back, breathing a sigh of relief as she walks away from him into the closet. Oliver follows, of course he does, but it's more magnetic than predatory.

“I honestly don’t care if we’re five hours late.” She hears him behind her when she turns and when she looks up to the mirror, he’s right there over her shoulder, blue eyes twinkling. “I just need you there with me.”

He’s gotten so good at this already, so good at openness, at flooring her with his honesty and smacking her sideways with his dedication to this new facet of their partnership. She truly expected that it would be harder to keep him opening up once they had returned from the vivid fantasy of their trip to the grayscale of Starling City, but now she feels like she’s the one falling behind.

Felicity turns in his arms, running her hands up the sides of his face and scratching up into his hair in the way she already knows makes his eyes flutter shut.

“I just need you too,” she whispers. “That’s the only thing I need from you.”


End file.
